It's Summer Challenge Time Again!

Well, I failed at my task to get a new book to read this past week. Which means I instead spent that time writing. So.... win?

After my post last week the day went very sideways, and so I didn't have the time I thought I would before Writing Group. In fact, I ended up running late, so I sprinted up to the room, and saw that it was already pretty filled. That was kind of exciting, to see the group blossom like this.

Anyway, it also meant that I didn't take the time before group to set up a library card finally, and then borrow the book I was intending. Since group goes until the library closes, I couldn't very well get everything sorted out after group. And, as it turns out, Tuesdays are the only days of the week the library is open longer than my new job, so unless I have another weekday off, Tuesdays are my only Library Days. So, care to guess what I'm going to squeeze in on my day off today?

As for Writing Group, I discovered that Keaton has been with the group since it started five years ago. I had a feeling she was a "charter member" as it were. I'm fairly certain at least DFL is too. It would make sense that the two of them feel most comfortable leading the group if that's true. Although, DFL has been leaning more towards leading the group than actually participating in it. It makes me concerned, and so I tried to encourage her to bring something to read next time. We'll see how that goes. But Keaton being with the group for five years means that she's also been working on her weird anthology concept of "these are all random writing prompts all about Buster Keaton, but there's no true connecting story" for about as long. I'm curious as to why she's stalling on calling the story complete, and either moving on or working on a different volume.

Doesn't matter. There were other people there. There was a new gentleman who didn't think to bring anything to read, so he just listened and commented. Works for us. He is in the same boat as me: likes about three different genres - including High Fantasy - but isn't sure which genre he wants to write in, and/or has no story concept to focus on. It will be interesting to see him grow; it might give me more of a direction myself.

Another "new" member - she was around years ago and finally decided to rejoin the group - was this timid older woman. She was adorable. Her writing was good. However, for some reason because she went with tribal names like Snowy Owl and Shining Moon, three of the people in the room thought she was talking about anthropomorphized animals, like wolves, and were thrown off when the characters turned out to be human. I didn't get that confusion. I just pictured the scene as two Inuits in the woods, so my only confusion was that this was supposed to be a post-apocalyptic story, and I was picturing it as before Alaska was invaded by Americans/Canadians/whomever. To each their own, I guess. If those three were confused, others could be too, and so I guess it was a good thing that she took note of the critique.

We had one last "new" member. Again, someone who had already been a member, but hasn't attended in about a year. She was a really spunky older woman. Her wiring must be different than everyone else, because she was coming up with questions no one else seemed to even imagine asking. They were both very good points, and very left-field points. Frankly, I would have ignored the left-field ones because they were so odd, but the good points were definitely ones to take to heart.

The one gentleman who had been reading us his spy novel - did I name him yet? For right now I'll go with his main character's name: Carson - continued on his story. We had a nice round table about it: critiques, praise, questions about the over-arching plot, etc.

A woman who started coming a few weeks back also read. She's writing personal essays, which are works of non-fiction written sort of similarly to an autobiography, but laser-focused on just one event. She already read about her walking the college track to help her get over her painful divorce. Last week she read about the loss of an old colleague, and how that put her own career goals into focus. Since her theme unintentionally, but beautifully done, is "journeys" or "moving forward" I think I'm calling her Traveler.

We had another round table with Traveler, and the Left-Field woman came up with her many questions. One was that she wanted to know more about the colleague's goals, and how they were parallel to Traveler's. I personally figured it was unneeded information; that it was implied enough that it didn't need to be stated, but maybe other readers do need it spelled out a bit more.

Red - who hasn't been dying her hair, so it's not so red; gonna need to rethink her name - has been in a writing funk, and so we discussed ways to get her back into the rhythm of things. I suggested Ali Luke's concept of starting with just 15 minutes a day. That seemed to really inspire her. "Oh, I can do that. I can take 15 minutes." Thank you, Ali, for inspiring yet another writer! We also suggested that maybe she needed to just work on random writing prompts for the time being; to give her mind a rest from her grim murder/decent-into-insanity drama. She seemed to respond to that idea too. So, we'll see if that means she'll bring something new in next week.

Last up was Sandy. Like all the other published authors I talk about here, no nickname for her to protect her privacy. How am I supposed to promote her and her book once I'm done reading it if I'm using a nickname for her? Anyway, she read a bit more of her draft of her book's sequel. It was more of an establishing scene to introduce all the characters. For me it was a bit lackluster because it was everyone gathering for a barbecue, plus it was confusing because you have David - the main character - Danny, I think - I can't recall, honestly - and his wife Dee. There were just too many D-Names being thrown at me, and I was having a hard time keeping straight who was doing or saying what, because none of them have distinctly different characterists/voices yet. At least, not displayed in that little segment. We'll have to see how she tweaks it, or if she even can. For all I know all these D-Names were already introduced in the first story.

Snuggled about half-way through everyone else was me. I read off "The Fallen Guardian Angel" to everyone. As per usual, most seemed to really enjoy it, with virtually no critiques. The most round table discussion we had was me informing people what fanfiction was, and giving a quick synopsis of "Xenocide" so everyone knew the events surrounding the story I read. I didn't think to explain the Jane character though, and that might have resulted in the only critique I received. Carson felt that Novinha's arguments were so raw and passionate, that you sided with her easily. Comparatively, he felt that Ender's arguments seemed hallow and non-genuine. This is FAR from the truth. While no one else at the table either countered or echoed Carson's critique, it is still one of the few I've ever received. So I wanted to take it to heart as much as possible.

Could I have written Ender completely out of character? Did I make him too meek while fighting back with Novinha? What made his arguments seem hallow? Was it the comments about him already hurting Novinha because of Jane? While not terribly too off, did Carson believe that Ender had an affair with Jane, and therefore his profession of love to Novinha seemed untrue? I didn't stop to think to ask Carson WHY he felt that way, I just nodded and jotted the critique down to think about. And now I'm not sure where I went wrong. It's possible he's the only one who felt that way. It's possible I wrote Ender completely wrong. It's possible that Ender's counterarguments only seem false because Carson doesn't understand who Jane is.

Point being, if any of my readers felt the same way about my latest one-shot, please respond either below or in the comments of the story itself to give me an idea of where I went wrong. Thank you.

Anyway, so that was last week's Writing Group. As I mentioned, life got chaotic, and I didn't have time to grab the book for this week. So, I ended up bringing my netbook to work in order to at least write during the painfully slow times.

I decided to take another crack at "Glitches." For those who may have missed it last week, I had decided to just go with "Glitches" as my working title for my X-Future Reboot story. I'll work out later if that title is already being used, and/or if it's catchy enough to draw people in for a first read.

Anyway, I converted my comic script into a movie one. Not a very good movie one, though, because it includes very few shots or transition marks. It's written more like a stage play, I guess, but it's too complicated to be able to perform on stage. Eh, either way, it's part prose narrative, part script. I figured it was the easiest way to read it aloud to the Writing Group without them being overly confused; hopefully. So it's not written as a proper script, so what? It's not supposed to be a screenplay anyway. I figured, write it out as this weird novel-script hybrid, and then once everything is figured out and talked through in the Writing Group, I can properly convert it back into a comic script.

I just need to figure out where the heck to post it so I can share it with you guys. I don't know if I want to share the WIP though, that's the thing. So, I may just talk about my progress more here, instead of actually sharing something from it each week.

To really try to get my butt in gear about this whole thing, I looked towards Writers’ Huddle. I disappear. I come back. I disappear again. Well, Ali is again starting up the Summer Writing Challenge, and it began yesterday. Seems like a great time for my Grand Return yet again.

As per usual, I have no clue what I want to do for the challenge since I have no direction or focus like everyone else seems to have. So, I decided - for the time being - to go full throttle with "Glitches." I'm aiming to write three more pages for my weird prose-script hybrid thing each day. That way I'll always have something new to read from it for Writing Group each other week.

Granted, I couldn't read ALL that I had if I keep with the 3-a-day pace since that's 42 pages each meeting. The general rule of thumb is that each page of script is about a minute of screen time. That's not even including the time it takes to read the action going on. No way. Too much to read each meeting. I'd take up at least half the time! Still, it would mean I'd have a LOT of "backlogged" writing to read after the challenge concludes and I go back to being a bum about this whole writing thing, or I switch gears. Whichever.

Plus, I'll probably chump out on my days off in favor of cleaning, watching TV, and/or playing video games. PLUS, Spink has her wedding at the end of July, and so I'll probably get a bit overwhelmed with helping her finish organizing that. PLUS, I still have that reading challenge too. So, maybe I should drop that down to two pages a day so I can easily pick up the slack from my days off....

Anyway, that's my game plan for this week: get my July Book from the library to start reading, work on some semblance of a plot outline for "Glitches," and write 3 pages per day for the "script." It may not be something I can then post to share with you to read, but I can still talk about my progress, right?

Productively Writing Nothing

Ever had one of those weeks where you worked your butt off and still managed to accomplish nothing? Yup. That was me.

I told you last week how I was working fairly diligently on populating Ashitar for the Sunday D&D session, as well as building more of its history. Well, Friday I spent the better part of TEN. FLIPPIN'. HOURS. working on this project. I did some research before work. I did some more during my lunch break. Some more while waiting for Hubby to get out of work. And I kept going from the moment I got home until I nearly passed out on the couch. I didn't even realize I wasn't getting anywhere or missing out on more productive things, such as actual writing or at least cleaning the apartment.

I had stumbled upon the D&D Wiki page on town-building - which I would have gone to first if I had thought about it existing - and just set up camp. I went through all the charts and percentages and algorithms on this insanely-long page. I set up spreadsheet charts with their own algorithms built so all I have to do is input the population next time. And what did I accomplish with all of this?

I know how much of the population is male vs female. How many are able-bodied adults vs children, elderly, and infirm. I know how many are elderly, and how many of THEM are male vs female. I know how many are infirm, and again the sex-split within that category. I know how many children are boys, and how many are girls. I know how many are teens, which is only 13-15 in the D&D world since you reach adulthood at fifteen. I know how many children are 3-13, and how many are toddlers or infants. I know how many are any given race between human, elf, half-elf, halfling, dwarf, gnome, and half-orc. I also know the professions found in Ashitar, and the breakdown of how many of each profession there are.

Do I know anything of any significance? Like the names of the important players in the town? The layout of Ashitar? The names of the Assassin's Guild or Thieve's Den? The names of the pubs they hang out in? Any "quest givers" for the party? Nope. Not a clue. At least, not when I was done "working" on Friday.

A whole lot of studying, planning, and work focusing on entirely the wrong things. That's me!

I don't recall why, but Saturday was also a bust. So here it is, Sunday. Everyone was coming over to play, and I have nothing to work with. I got done with yet another overnight shift close to two hours before my husband would be done, and so I sat in the break room and just worked. I doodled out a VERY rough city map. I scribbled down every possible Quest Thread that I could think of. I came up with rumors that would be going throughout the place. I was on fire! I felt accomplished when Hubby showed up in the break room to let me know he was done.

I was even more amazed when I found out that he got his work done about an hour early, and I had accomplished all of that in around 45minutes! Whoo! I guess first thing in the morning IS my prime creativity time. I miss having my Sunday Insomnia writing sessions.

Unfortunately, it ended up being all for naught. My main quest giver felt her world crumbling around her and acted with emotion instead of thought. She meant no harm, but it put a couple player-characters on the defensive. Which lead them to irritate her since she interpreted their defensiveness as disrespect. So now Hubby and Quarthix's characters believe the human baroness racist against all non-humans - Hubby's an elf and Quarthix is a dwarf - and wish to have little to nothing to do with her. Meanwhile, she doesn't want to be in the same room with these disrespecting people. The likelihood that I can get the three of them together for her to offer a paid quest seems difficult, and so that has been my challenge this week: find a way to get them to all play nice.

Well, on top of that challenge already, Hubby's character convinced another to be a bit naughty, to say the least. See, our friend Goob has a bard for a character, which means he has a lot of Charisma that he can use for, say... bluffing someone. Hubby's character reminded Goob's character that the Baroness said that she wanted them out of her sight, and that she "didn't care where they went, as long as it wasn't in the same room as her." He used this wording to convince the bard that this would mean she wouldn't mind them checking out the mansion's coffer.

Goob's character used his bluff to convince the simple town guard sent to escort them that he should give them a tour of the mansion first; starting at the mansion's coffer.

In reality, I should have just said, "The guard knows better. You cannot bluff him about this." However, I'm new to DMing, I was tired from working the overnight and not napping before game started, and so I just rolled to see if the guard believed the bard. Alas, he not only believed him, he thought it was an order from the Baroness. He faithfully lead the party down to the coffer, where Hubby's character skillfully thieved two out of the three jewels resting in the safe. Again, I should have been like "NO!" but....

So, not only do I have to smooth things over between the Baroness and the party so they can get their main quest-line from her, but I have to make everyone too stupid to realize that the jewels magically disappeared from the coffer about the same time these strange people - who were already disrespectful, in the Baroness' eyes - were in the mansion. Oh yeah, and Hubby cleaved one of his stolen goods, a black pearl, in half in order to set them into the eye sockets of the black dragon skull he is turning into a helm for Quarthix's dwarf. So, naturally, either the dwarf never sets foot in Ashitar again - which sucks since I was planning on having it be the party's home-base for at least another six quests or so - or he can't wear his helm anywhere near town for fear of someone recognizing the black pearl. Hubby claims it will be fine because it will look like TWO black pearls, when only one was stolen. Still..... It's bad enough Quarthix kept some of the Baron's rings when they found him dead in a dungeon. He was smart enough to take those off before seeing the man's widow, but to hide those AND the black pearl dragon helm? I don't know how to convince Quarthix to have his character stay at Ashitar; aside from going "I'm the DM and I say you have to stay here!"

Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc.

So, yeah, it's been a fun week trying to figure all of THAT out. So it didn't really leave me much extra time to, ya know, WRITE.

Which was interesting come this past Tuesday when I went to my writing group. Not really anyone had anything to read, which was even more awkward. When I joined the group back at the end of October, I met a woman who had managed to not only finish writing a 50,000 word book during NaNo, but she polished and published it as well. She and her husband both had medical issues that kept them from working, and so they were both "retired". Apparently, when I met her in October they were in the final stages of selling their house and moving into an RV instead. I then didn't see her again until this past Tuesday because she and her husband were spending the winter traveling the US; visiting family across the country and taking in historical sights.

Since she had made her triumphant return the previous Saturday, not many of us had seen her yet. We spent most of the evening asking her about her trip, and how she's coming along with her next story. Seems the "next story" that she was trying to get published back in October was now "three stories ago". Well then.

To be fair, she IS retired and had really nothing better to do while on the road for hours on end, so I guess I really shouldn't compare. Plus, if she was able to keep that NaNo pace of write for a month, and then spend the next month polishing, it's believable that she was able to crank out three more over the winter. Still. It's hard for me to not compare. To not be dumbfounded by her productivity. To not be proud of her, but still a bit envious that she's so successful while I can't even figure out what ONE story I want to make into a manuscript.

Anyway, we all gushed over her, which apparently was making her a bit uncomfortable, and so she kept trying to redirect us back to why we were there: writing. What were WE up to while she was gone? Well, DFL and Keaton confirmed that they were very slowly chugging along on their respective stories; the same ones that this woman already knew about. Red then informed the woman about the story she's been working on since our one writing prompt in November: the woman off her meds and planning a homicidal bender. She then read the latest section to us. It had a really nice twist. We talked about her story for a bit; her concerns versus what we thought was really good about it. Once we all seemed to have said what we wanted to, we moved on to a relatively new member.

She had made an appearance once before at the start of the year. Since she knew the new gentleman that had joined in March, I assumed she too had shown up at least once in those two meetings I missed. Making this her third or fourth group meeting.

When she first attended a few months back, she commented about how she wrote clinical papers for a living, and so writing anything creative was a challenge for her. Well, this week she talked about this great 6hr retreat she went on last Saturday, and how she was planning on doing the same thing every Saturday for the near-future. Whatever it was that went on in that zen-like retreat atmosphere must have worked its charms, because what this woman read was beautiful. She had such great imagery, and such a simple but powerful tale. We went on for a little bit about her work. How she was improving, what phrases really struck us, how the story made us feel, so on and so forth.

Then came my turn. I confessed that I was world-building this past month. I then explained to the woman who went before me what I meant by world-building. Once the mini-lesson was concluded, I brought up Welcome to Ashitar to read to them. While there were many discussions with the other works read, the only reactions I received when I was done were "Wow, that was very detailed" from the woman who wasn't sure what world-building was, and "Ashitar and Boar's Tusk Inn remind me of Bree and The Prancing Pony from Lord of the Rings, and that's a good thing." I took both as encouraging remarks, but not really much to build off of, and not the "keep going" energy that the other two writers got.

Not really sure what my take-away will be from this week's meeting.

Finally, it is April, which would normally mean:

Originally an event sponsored by the Office of Letters and Light
The people who run National Novel Writing Month

I've contacted ChibiSunnie. She's going through her notes, and I'm going through the script we have so far for our fan interpretation of the "Hey, Arnold! Jungle Movie". Boy, is it rough.

I've been lamenting lately that for me practice never seems to make perfect. The more I try to make a dish, the more often I seem to burn it. I play video games and strategy games more and more, and seem to get worse at them. As if "beginner's luck" is the only chance I have at winning, or at least not dying endlessly. I've been crocheting for over a decade, and yet my crafts seem to be looking worse instead of better. And then there's my writing. I never seem to see an improvement.

Then I look back at this script, and think that maybe everything in that last paragraph is just in my head!

Kind of makes me scared, though, to know that about four years ago I thought this was good writing. That I showed skills. That I could really go places with my writing. Only to look back on it now and go "Holy Hand Grenades! Did *I* write this!?" No wonder I never won contests, or get much of a fan-base.

It's encouraging to know that I AM improving, but at the same time, it's discouraging to realize that I really am not as good as I think I am. What about now? Am I still crap now, but just don't realize it yet? Is this why everyone else in our group gets a full discussion going about her work, but I just get a couple quick comments before moving on?

I'm in my head again, I know, but it would be nice to know if either I do have a future in writing, or if I still have a LOOOOOONG way to go before I'm good enough to get a decent reader fanbase.

I look at some writings my friends post. They fancy themselves fantastic writers, and I just sort of facepalm. Then I wonder if it's the same for me. Do I make others facepalm when they read my works? Do they silently go "Oh, honey, no. Just, no..." as well? Or am I being too hard on myself? Getting too far into my own head? Do I really have the potential I always thought I had?

I guess those are the things all authors ponder at some point. The real challenge, is either finding the answers, or not caring what those answers are.

Finally, Some Writing!

Wow, I never went back and wrote a blog post last week. Sorry about that. Not intended. It was just a crazy week, and Wednesday proved too full a day for me to write my post ahead of time, and Thursday I was at work all day. I had all intentions to write the post when I got home on Thursday, or while Hubby was out on Friday. As per usual, things didn't go as planned.

I guess it was for the best, though. I really would have hated to write "I didn't write anything" in yet ANOTHER long-winded, excuse-filled post. Which was one of the reasons I didn't go back to write a post last week. I ended up using that time to actually write some fiction! Egads!

Before my first game as the DM, I had created a bit of a backstory for the tavern the party met at, as well as the town it was associated with, even though it was on the outskirts. It kept me nearly a month to go back to it, but last weekend I finally took the time to sit my butt down and finish the darn thing. Due to the nature of how the story evolved - first tavern, then town, then surrounding area, etc - there is an unproportional amount of time spent talking about this one establishment. I still need more info on the other businesses, the people, the Assassin's Guild, the Thieve's Den, the baron and his family as well as their relationship to the count, etc. In the meantime, though, I feel it's a good start, without it being as overwhelming as my Sandikir culture write up last year.

Also, last year someone commented that not all the Sandikir words seemed to connect to each other in order to make a coherent language. I get that. I'm far from a linguist. I can barely master my native tongue, I can't seem to figure out any other languages - even though they are all comparatively much easier than English - and so knowing language enough to create a believable one is a bit out of my wheelhouse. At some point I'll have to figure out how people were able to come up with their own languages so that I can do the same. That's probably decades from now, though.

The reason I bring this up is that I'm sure I'm going to have a similar issue with this story. I took a variety of approaches to name multiple different things - from landscapes to gods to familial names to business names, etc - and it might seem a bit disjointed from each other. My defense? I took the American approach to things. We're a melting-pot of cultures and languages, and we steal from those cultures and languages all the time to create a diverse environment. You might drive down King's Street, turn left on Rodero Drive, pass Lopatcong Road, and finally park on Lafayette Boulevard. That's four different cultures smooshed together on one simple road trip. They may seem so disconnected, but it works for a diverse culture like America. So, I'm just going to assume the majority of the countries and cultures in Gyateara will be built "melting pot" style.

"Welcome to Ashitar"

On DeviantArt          On FictionPress

I had made sure to finish up this little story, edit it, and post it on DeviantArt as well as FictionPress all by Easter Sunday. Which reminds me. I missed last week's post, and so I also missed this:

I would normally also wish people a happy Passover at this time, but apparently that's still about a month away. Strange that the two celebrations can be so separate from each other when The Last Supper was a Passover meal.... Anyway....

After a bunch of confusion, it was brought to my attention that I unintentionally missed the last local writing group meeting. I had missed the one due to being sick. Then, the Tuesday after visiting my sister was supposed to be the next meeting. I thought that were the case, but I was so - is there a term for "jetlag" when you were just driving four hours away in the same timezone? - that I lost track as to whether it was one or two Tuesdays previous I was sick. Hubby was just as confused, I guess, because he also thought it was still an "off" week. So, last Tuesday I was all set to go to the meeting - although I didn't have anything to really read aside from the incomplete form of "Welcome to Ashitar" - only to get an email stating it wasn't the right day.

The local paper was apparently just as confused as I was, because they had also printed that the 22nd was the next meeting; exactly what I had thought. There was a big email debate as to whether or not the journalist was correct, how we all go the schedule confused, and whether or not we should have meetings three weeks in a row - in case some newbies showed up. Eventually it was decided that the librarians would inform any newcomers of the mix-up, but the meeting would still just wait until this past Tuesday.

The confusion did give us all a great writing prompt, though. So, after a month of no writing group - due to accidentally skipping a second one - I came back a bit triumphant. Not only did I have "Welcome to Ashitar" finished for a read-through, but I also had the writing prompt completed as well:

A newcomer to a writing group gets the dates wrong, and is invited to "another group" that is meeting that night at the library.

We had some very interesting responses to this prompt. Keaton wrote about two boys in a post-zombie-apocalypse traveling twelve miles to a neighboring community in order to join a writing group. They come across a cult-like community of segregation between the sexes. Men and women are never in the same room - aside from a mother caring for her son, or the process that leads to a woman becoming a mother in the first place.... - and the boys happened to have shown up on the WOMEN'S writing group night. Keaton didn't get to the point where the boys were officially invited to join another group, but the men of the village welcomed them into the community messhall for dinner.

DFL was having some computer frustrations over the past couple of weeks - after her computer was forced to upgrade to Windows 10 - and so her character had the same frustrations, only to have her day punctuated with the news that her group was cancelled for that night. She was then offered a knitting or computing group to join for the night since she was already at the library. The character opted for the computing group in hopes of learning how to better deal with her own computer. She discovers that the room was filled with middle-aged, blue-collar or retired citizens all just as frustrated with the Windows 10 upgrade, and so they were plotting to build a bomb in order to threaten Microsoft. The story was actually so amusing to picture. I almost wish this was in some sort of visual format for me to watch.

Red had continued a prompt from when I was sick: three randomly selected elements worked together. We had done similar prompts in the past. Her three elements were a parrot, Hurricane Irene, and "Something in the pocket". She hadn't made it to the pocket bit, but the rest of the story was intriguing. A young Au Pair is trying to persuade her young ward to make two large changes in his life. The first is to visit either his mother or father; both in different prisons after being caught as drug-runners during the chaos of Hurricane Irene's clean-up. The second would be to switch from homeschooling - which he had done his whole life - to joining the public high school now that his education surpassed what the Au Pair was qualified to teach him. The parrot element had the family pet mimic important background conversations in order to give both the audience and Au Pair the insight into the kid needed to help him with these transitions.

The final member of the group this past week was apparently a new member as of the meeting I accidentally skipped - if not the one I was sick for. The first "regular" man in our group. It's nice to have the new perspective, especially with us women trying to write males. It would be good for us to have an actual male opinion on whether or not we're writing men "correctly".

I'm under the assumption that he was the one that offered up the "writer on the wrong day" prompt, and he used it beautifully. The lead-in to the mix-up seemed a bit unnecessarily long, but his depiction of the main character was fantastic and humorous. He then gets to the miscommunication, and has his character come across an eccentrically gaudy woman of questionable sexual morality. I pictured the woman perfectly, and every line of description had me actually laughing out loud. Most of us were, actually. It must have really reassured him to hear the laughs he wrote in.

Me? Well, I got a couple of chuckles, but not nearly as many as I thought I wrote in. I don't know if it was a matter of my verbal delivery, the way I delivered it on paper, if it's only amusing to people of my demographic, if it was amusing but not laugh-out-loud so, or if it just wasn't as funny as I thought. Either way, the new gentleman in our group stated that he could picture everything well, and it got his attention. I guess that's something, right?

I think everyone was more focused on trying to learn alongside my main character. I had him stumble upon a group of people using the library as a staging location for their Boff group. For those who don't know, Boffing is Live-Action Role Play using foam weapons to act out fight scenes, and usually set in a High Fantasy setting; so people are generally in Medieval or Renaissance style clothing. No one in the room knew what Boffing was, and so as my secondary character Jenn quickly explained to my main character Ian, the room seemed just as interested to know. Keaton even asked a few follow-up questions on Boffing in general.

All-in-all, everyone seemed to want me to continue the story, which was also reassuring. I stopped it where it could be a nice one-off, but it was also open ended enough to lead into more chapters. I'm probably going to focus more on Gyateara for the near future; build up more of Ashitar so that my players have something semi-substantial to run around in. However, I will give continuing the Boff Group story some serious thought.

Until I get to the point of continuing the story, it will wait patiently in my Anthology. Although, I'll probably have to remove it as a chapter once I decide to make it a story of it's own. Oh well, crossing bridges once I get to them and all.

Like I said, in the meantime, you can find it here:

"Everything for a Reason"

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I also managed to finish "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish" yesterday, giving me my second or third - depending on how you're counting - book completed for the reading challenge. Let's check out that list again, shall we?

Challenge created by Modern Mrs. Darcy

Alright, so I have a few "Schrodinger Books" right now, in which they are simultaneously two different categories until future information leads me to which category they're actually falling into.

Both "Life, the Universe, and Everything" and "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish" can fill the "published before you were born" category. LU&E can also fill the "already read at least once" category while SL&TfAtF could also fill the "previously abandoned" category. If I read one more story that can fill the "published before you were born" category, and only that one, I'll shift the other two into the other categories. Otherwise, I'll have to shift either of those Hitchhiker's Guide sequels into that publication category if I read something else for a second time, or another book I gave up on; such as books I should have read in school. ALL THE SCHRODINGER BOOKS!!!!

Now to figure out what I'm going to read next. Also, tomorrow is April First. Not only does that make it April Fool's Day, but it also makes it the first day of the now disbanded Script Frenzy month. Considering Nickelodeon announced a few months back that they were FINALLY greenlighting The Jungle Movie - after the fans fought for it for nearly a decade - I feel like perhaps I should reach out to ChibiSunnie, and we should finally finish our own version of the movie plot before Nickelodeon releases the official one.

So, I must make a few decisions: what to read, what to write, and whether or not to try out Script Frenzy on top of my other fiction writing.